Xiduo Ding

Portable Library explores how historical bookbinding architecture and gestures —unfurling, folding, binding, and stacking — can be translated into wearable artefacts for contemporary readers, artists, and collectors. In a post-digital context where reading is increasingly reduced to frictionless screen interactions, the project argues for the value of embodied handling and material care. 

Rooted in Chinese and East Asian book cultures, where binding mediates between content (dao) and vessel (qi), the work treats joints, stitches, and panels as architectural elements that guide the hand and choreograph use. Each artefact is structured around a single, legible action, encouraging slower and more intentional encounters with books, catalogues, and audio listening media. 

The project consists of six wearable “portable libraries” made using bamboo, vegetable-tanned leather, parchment, and linen. Developed through material-led experimentation and hand bookbinding techniques, the artefacts function as tools of custodianship, re-ritualising reading as a bodily practice.